This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Thursday, June 26, 2014

More legal documents have been filed in the pending lawsuit filed by trainees in the coveted pre-apprentice training program led by Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) signatory Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), which faces a July 11 hearing date.

Participants claim they were promised jobs and union cards by not only by BUILD but also by representatives of Forest City Ratner.

One exchange in a deposition, excerpted below, includes developer Bruce Ratner's answer to the question about why the Independent Compliance Monitor promised in the much-touted CBA, signed in June 2005, was never hired.

The full answer is cut off, but Ratner's suggestion that it might have been "covered in other way" belies the plain fact of the CBA requirement. And the failure to hire the monitor exemplifies a lack of accountability regarding the project.